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The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is committed to writing new documents in plain language by October 2011, using the Federal Plain Language Guidelines and following the Office of Management and Budget's final guidance issued on April 13, 2011.

We need your help to comply with this Act! Let us know if you have trouble understanding our documents or the pages on our Web site. Send an email to VAPlainLanguage@va.gov

We are training our employees and have strengthened our oversight process to ensure that you— the reader—will benefit from our products and services. To this end, we intend to use plain language in any document that:

is necessary for obtaining VA benefits or services;

provides information about any VA benefit or service; or

explains to the public how to comply with a requirement that VA administers or enforces.

To help us comply with this Act and evaluate our progress, we invite you to contact us with feedback on the following topics:

Our Plain Writing Action Plan

Difficulty understanding our documents or information on our public Web site

Plain Language Compliance Report

Plain Writing Resources

The Plain Language Action and Information Network (PLAIN) is the official interagency working group designated to assist in issuing plain writing guidance. The PLAIN Web site includes guidelines on plain language and tools for writing in plain language.

Training

VA continues to strive to improve how well we communicate with our primary target audience, our Nation’s Veterans and their families. VA’s Learning University (VALU) developed a series of 13 classes to educate Department employees who write policies, reports, memos, briefs, and other business documents. To date, over 1150 employees have taken these classes to improve their writing skills. Employees are also learning to apply plain language techniques and document testing skills to perform Plain Language compliance testing on multi-use documents (documents sent out to hundreds and thousands of people).

Free on-line training is available to the public at the following sites: